NAME
semop, semtimedop - System V semaphore operations SYNOPSIS
#include
#include
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int semop(int semid, struct sembuf *sops, unsigned nsops); int semtimedop(int semid, struct sembuf *sops, unsigned nsops, struct timespec *timeout); Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see featuretestmacros(7)): semtimedop(): GNUSOURCE DESCRIPTION Each semaphore in a System V semaphore set has the following associated values: unsigned short semval; /* semaphore value */ unsigned short semzcnt; /* # waiting for zero */
unsigned short semncnt; /* # waiting for increase */ pidt sempid; /* ID of process that did last op */ semop() performs operations on selected semaphores in the set indicated by semid. Each of the nsops elements in the array pointed to by sops specifies an operation to be performed on a single semaphore. The ele‐ ments of this structure are of type struct sembuf, containing the fol‐ lowing members: unsigned short semnum; /* semaphore number */ short semop; /* semaphore operation */ short semflg; /* operation flags */ Flags recognized in semflg are IPCNOWAIT and SEMUNDO. If an opera‐ tion specifies SEMUNDO, it will be automatically undone when the process terminates. The set of operations contained in sops is performed in array order, and atomically, that is, the operations are performed either as a com‐ plete unit, or not at all. The behavior of the system call if not all operations can be performed immediately depends on the presence of the IPCNOWAIT flag in the individual semflg fields, as noted below.
Each operation is performed on the semnum-th semaphore of the sema‐ phore set, where the first semaphore of the set is numbered 0. There are three types of operation, distinguished by the value of semop. If semop is a positive integer, the operation adds this value to the semaphore value (semval). Furthermore, if SEMUNDO is specified for this operation, the system subtracts the value semop from the sema‐ phore adjustment (semadj) value for this semaphore. This operation can always proceed—it never forces a thread to wait. The calling process must have alter permission on the semaphore set. If semop is zero, the process must have read permission on the sema‐
phore set. This is a "wait-for-zero" operation: if semval is zero, the operation can immediately proceed. Otherwise, if IPCNOWAIT is speci‐ fied in semflg, semop() fails with errno set to EAGAIN (and none of the operations in sops is performed). Otherwise semzcnt (the count of threads waiting until this semaphore's value becomes zero) is incre‐ mented by one and the thread sleeps until one of the following occurs: · semval becomes 0, at which time the value of semzcnt is decremented. · The semaphore set is removed: semop() fails, with errno set to EIDRM. · The calling thread catches a signal: the value of semzcnt is decre‐ mented and semop() fails, with errno set to EINTR. · The time limit specified by timeout in a semtimedop() call expires: semop() fails, with errno set to EAGAIN. If semop is less than zero, the process must have alter permission on the semaphore set. If semval is greater than or equal to the absolute value of semop, the operation can proceed immediately: the absolute value of semop is subtracted from semval, and, if SEMUNDO is speci‐ fied for this operation, the system adds the absolute value of semop to the semaphore adjustment (semadj) value for this semaphore. If the absolute value of semop is greater than semval, and IPCNOWAIT is specified in semflg, semop() fails, with errno set to EAGAIN (and none of the operations in sops is performed). Otherwise semncnt (the counter of threads waiting for this semaphore's value to increase) is incremented by one and the thread sleeps until one of the following occurs: · semval becomes greater than or equal to the absolute value of semop: the operation now proceeds, as described above. · The semaphore set is removed from the system: semop() fails, with errno set to EIDRM. · The calling thread catches a signal: the value of semncnt is decre‐ mented and semop() fails, with errno set to EINTR. · The time limit specified by timeout in a semtimedop() call expires: the system call fails, with errno set to EAGAIN. On successful completion, the sempid value for each semaphore specified in the array pointed to by sops is set to the caller's process ID. In addition, the semotime is set to the current time. semtimedop() behaves identically to semop() except that in those cases where the calling thread would sleep, the duration of that sleep is limited by the amount of elapsed time specified by the timespec struc‐ ture whose address is passed in the timeout argument. (This sleep interval will be rounded up to the system clock granularity, and kernel scheduling delays mean that the interval may overrun by a small amount.) If the specified time limit has been reached, semtimedop() fails with errno set to EAGAIN (and none of the operations in sops is performed). If the timeout argument is NULL, then semtimedop() behaves exactly like semop(). RETURN VALUE If successful semop() and semtimedop() return 0; otherwise they return
-1 with errno indicating the error. ERRORS On failure, errno is set to one of the following: E2BIG The argument nsops is greater than SEMOPM, the maximum number of operations allowed per system call. EACCES The calling process does not have the permissions required to perform the specified semaphore operations, and does not have the CAPIPCOWNER capability. EAGAIN An operation could not proceed immediately and either IPCNOWAIT was specified in semflg or the time limit specified in timeout expired. EFAULT An address specified in either the sops or the timeout argument isn't accessible. EFBIG For some operation the value of semnum is less than 0 or greater than or equal to the number of semaphores in the set. EIDRM The semaphore set was removed. EINTR While blocked in this system call, the thread caught a signal; see signal(7). EINVAL The semaphore set doesn't exist, or semid is less than zero, or nsops has a nonpositive value. ENOMEM The semflg of some operation specified SEMUNDO and the system does not have enough memory to allocate the undo structure. ERANGE For some operation semop+semval is greater than SEMVMX, the implementation dependent maximum value for semval. VERSIONS semtimedop() first appeared in Linux 2.5.52, and was subsequently back‐ ported into kernel 2.4.22. Glibc support for semtimedop() first appeared in version 2.3.3. CONFORMING TO
SVr4, POSIX.1-2001. NOTES The inclusion of
and isn't required on Linux or by any version of POSIX. However, some old implementations required the inclusion of these header files, and the SVID also documented their inclusion. Applications intended to be portable to such old systems may need to include these header files. The semundo structures of a process aren't inherited by the child pro‐ duced by fork(2), but they are inherited across an execve(2) system call. semop() is never automatically restarted after being interrupted by a signal handler, regardless of the setting of the SARESTART flag when establishing a signal handler. A semaphore adjustment (semadj) value is a per-process, per-semaphore integer that is the negated sum of all operations performed on a sema‐ phore specifying the SEMUNDO flag. Each process has a list of semadj values—one value for each semaphore on which it has operated using
SEMUNDO. When a process terminates, each of its per-semaphore semadj values is added to the corresponding semaphore, thus undoing the effect of that process's operations on the semaphore (but see BUGS below). When a semaphore's value is directly set using the SETVAL or SETALL request to semctl(2), the corresponding semadj values in all processes are cleared. The semval, sempid, semzcnt, and semnct values for a semaphore can all be retrieved using appropriate semctl(2) calls. The following limits on semaphore set resources affect the semop() call: SEMOPM Maximum number of operations allowed for one semop() call (32) (on Linux, this limit can be read and modified via the third field of /proc/sys/kernel/sem). SEMVMX Maximum allowable value for semval: implementation dependent (32767). The implementation has no intrinsic limits for the adjust on exit maxi‐ mum value (SEMAEM), the system wide maximum number of undo structures
(SEMMNU) and the per-process maximum number of undo entries system parameters. BUGS When a process terminates, its set of associated semadj structures is used to undo the effect of all of the semaphore operations it performed with the SEMUNDO flag. This raises a difficulty: if one (or more) of these semaphore adjustments would result in an attempt to decrease a semaphore's value below zero, what should an implementation do? One possible approach would be to block until all the semaphore adjustments could be performed. This is however undesirable since it could force process termination to block for arbitrarily long periods. Another possibility is that such semaphore adjustments could be ignored alto‐ gether (somewhat analogously to failing when IPCNOWAIT is specified for a semaphore operation). Linux adopts a third approach: decreasing the semaphore value as far as possible (i.e., to zero) and allowing process termination to proceed immediately. In kernels 2.6.x, x <= 10, there is a bug that in some circumstances prevents a thread that is waiting for a semaphore value to become zero from being woken up when the value does actually become zero. This bug is fixed in kernel 2.6.11. EXAMPLE The following code segment uses semop() to atomically wait for the value of semaphore 0 to become zero, and then increment the semaphore value by one. struct sembuf sops[2]; int semid; /* Code to set semid omitted */ sops[0].semnum = 0; /* Operate on semaphore 0 */ sops[0].semop = 0; /* Wait for value to equal 0 */ sops[0].semflg = 0; sops[1].semnum = 0; /* Operate on semaphore 0 */ sops[1].semop = 1; /* Increment value by one */ sops[1].semflg = 0;
if (semop(semid, sops, 2) == -1) { perror("semop"); exit(EXITFAILURE); } SEE ALSO clone(2), semctl(2), semget(2), sigaction(2), capabilities(7), semoverview(7), svipc(7), time(7) COLOPHON
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Linux 2013-04-17 SEMOP(2)